Michigan, Anne Arbor

Cities as Sustainable Ecosystems1 By Peter Newman Professor of City Policy Director, Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy Murdoch University Perth, Western Australia And Chair, Sustainability Roundtable, Western Australian Government. 1 The 3rd Annual Wege Lecture, Center for Sustainable Systems, University of Michigan, Anne Arbor Abstract The United Nations Environment Program has facilitated a process of examining how cities can begin to change by learning from natural ecosystems. Ten principles (the Melbourne Principles) have been developed – vision, economy and society, biodiversity, ecological footprint, model cities on ecosystems, sense of place, empowerment, partnerships, sustainable productions and consumption, governance and hope. These are examined and illustrated to demonstrate the strength of the concept and their relevance to the future of cities: The paper suggests that innovation often has used mimicry of natural systems and the ecocity movement globally is showing how this can be done. Introduction Peter Wege had a ‘life changing experience’ while flying a training plane over Pittsburgh when the city’s smog prevented him from seeing the airfield. This paper is part of that tradition – it examines the work of many people who have sensed that cities have lost their way in the 20th century and need to rediscover a more fundamental understanding of how to exist more sustainably. My own personal journey was strongly influenced by living in the San Francisco Bay area during the first oil crisis when oil vulnerability became a living reality. The dramatic comparison between how the Bay area coped and how Dutch cities coped where I had just lived for a year led me to research cities, to invent the concept of ‘automobile dependence’2, to collect data on cities and their energy use for the past 25 years with my colleague Jeff Kenworthy, and to get involved in the policy and politics of how cities change3 So much of what I now do is wrapped up in the word sustainability and thus I have spent the past two and a half years working with the Premier of our State, Western Australia, on developing a State Sustainability Strategy. This was an intensive learning experience and confirmed for me that sustainability as suggested by Myersin and Rydin (1996) is the “post modern grand narrative” of our age. It is a magic word that evokes deep and creative responses from businesses, communities, and public servants. From these experiences of working to find partnerships between business, community and government I have found that whole new ways of thinking are emerging. Universities can easily be bypassed in this “grand narrative” as they were not the key drivers over the past thirty years. It has been a delight for me to find at Ann Arbor some real examples that disprove this general rule, and to see other emerging centers, like my own institute, where sustainability is the driving motivation. But it is important to see that sustainability came out of a process of global politics as people from around the world, like Peter Wege, saw that the global environment was rapidly deteriorating. Rachel Carson in 1962 did more to dramatise this than most and universities played their part in researching and teaching about environmental science from the 1970’s as they created a new science at the ecosystem scale. But then the great global gulf emerged in the 1980’s between the ecological view that progress was now polluted and development should therefore stop, and the economic view, particularly in the third world, that development was essential to provide the basic needs of a billion poor people and to meet aspirations of people everywhere. A real crisis in global politics was emerging as a result of this conflict. 2 Newman P and Kenworthy J (1989) Cities and Automobile Dependence, Gower, Aldershot. 3 Newman P and Kenworthy J (1999) Sustainability and Cities: Overcoming Automobile Dependence, Island Press, Washington DC. The United Nations stepped in and began the World Commission on Environment and Development where the concept of sustainable development emerged4. This Concept suggested: • Development in the poor world was necessary and that many global problems (including environmental problems) could not be solved without it; • Development in the rich world had to be fundamentally reshaped so that it did not require more resources and cause more environmental problems but would be a positive force on the environment. Thus a more positive approach to development was created but it depended, for its credibility on business, government and communities creating a totally new professional approach to development based on partnerships and integration rather that competition and isolated disciplines of knowledge and practice. The United Nations then asked the world to contribute to demonstrating this concept. In 1992 the Rio United Nations Conference on Environment and Development began to show the first signs of what it might mean, especially with Agenda 21. Local Agenda 21 was launched with local governments and this movement began to integrate across professions and disciplines and was a pioneer in charting sustainability for professionals. Then in 2002 the Johannesburg United Nations Conference, the World Summit on Sustainable Development, confirmed that it was no longer an issue of economics and ecology (or as Peter Wege says ‘economicology’) but of integrating the social dimension as well into the economic and environmental. The states of the world (regional governments to some) then also formed their network (nrg4sd) like local government and began to create sustainability strategies. The Western Australian government in 2003 became the first state government to have a comprehensive sustainability strategy5. Throughout this process, universities have not been at the center of how these concepts could be given meaning and purpose. This is mainly because of the great gulfs that exist between our modernist disciplines. We were in fact part of the problem, not part of the solution. To bring together social, economic and environmental realities is to attempt to “reconcile the irreconcilable” as suggested by Bradbury and Raynor6. To integrate descriptive, quantitative knowledge and interpretive, qualitative knowledge, the logic data and the strategic dialogue, the left and the right brain… My experience of this integration is that is possible but that mostly it occurs off the campus where the rigidities of thinking can be overcome in new partnerships of learning on the job or in the community7. The emergence of new university institutions that can create partnerships between business, economy and communities is now beginning – but they are rare treasures. The emergence of sustainability as the grand narrative of our time has not been much related to cities. This is partly because of the scale of the effort being directed at nations or at local government and partly due to disciplinary gulfs. This is now 4WCED (1987) Our Common Future, Oxford University Press, Oxford. 5 Western Australian Government (2003) Hope for the Future: the State Sustainability Strategy, Department of the Premier and Cabinet, Perth, WA. 6 Bradbury J and Raynor S (2002) Reconciling the Irreconcilable, in Abaza H and Baranzini, (eds) Implementing Sustainable Development: Integrated Assessment and Participatory Decision-making Processes, Edward Elgar Publishing, UK. 7Some of these approaches are outlined in our book on CASE, Newman P and Jennings I (2004) Cities As Sustainable Ecosystems, UNEP-IETC, Kobe, Japan. changing and we are seeing the emergence of what I call the ‘ecocities’ movement globally. The United Nations Environment Program has recognized this movement and in 2002 called a meeting of key people to develop a set of principles for a new program they called CASE – Cities As Sustainable Ecosystems. The process was set in motion by a meeting in Melbourne, Australia, which developed ten principles for CASE (see box 1). Box 1: The Melbourne Principles 1. VISION Provide a long-term vision for cities based on: intergenerational, social, economic and political equity; and their individuality. 2. ECONOMY & SOCIETY Achieve long-term economic and social security. 3. BIODIVERSITY Recognise the intrinsic value of biodiversity and natural ecosystems, and protect and restore them. 4. ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT Enable communities to minimise their ecological footprint. 5. MODEL CITIES ON ECOSYSTEMS Build on the characteristics of ecosystems in the development and nurturing of healthy and sustainable cities. 6. SENSE OF PLACE Recognise and build on the distinctive characteristics of cities, including their human and cultural values, history and natural systems. 7. EMPOWERMENT Empower people and foster participation. 8. PARTNERSHIPS Expand and enable co-operative networks to work towards a common, sustainable future. 9. TECHNOLOGY Promote sustainable production and consumption, through appropriate use of environmentally sound technologies and effective demand management. 10. GOVERNANCE & HOPE Enable continual improvement, based on accountability, transparency and good governance. This paper will discuss these principles and how we have tried to flesh them out as a book to illustrate and expand CASE. The paper will therefore be structured to elaborate on each of the principles. There are several core ideas that come out of CASE and these will be listed at the end but all the principles are based on the notion that innovation usually comes out of how we learn from nature;

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